For Immediate Release

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019

Media Contact: Benjamin Paulin
Phone: 781-428-3299
Email: [email protected]

Medway Public Schools, Town of Medway Receive State Grant to Improve Cybersecurity Awareness

MEDWAY — Superintendent Armand Pires and Medway Director of Information Services Richard Boucher are pleased to announce that Medway Public Schools and the Town of Medway were awarded a grant as part of the 2019 Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program to improve awareness and training among staff.

Distributed by the state’s Executive Office of Technology Services and Security Office of Municipal and School Technology, the grant will fund the extension of the town’s current cybersecurity awareness and training tools to Medway Public School staff.

With the help of the grant, the town and school district will educate approximately 500 staff members on cyber threats and provide training and best practices for keeping the community’s data as secure as possible. Over the next few weeks, the town’s Information Services Department will work with the schools to develop a comprehensive plan for cybersecurity training and assessment.

The funding will also be used to add to the existing municipal efforts in cybersecurity awareness. The town has been using a tool called KnowBe4 for the past three years. The program allows the town to train staff and run campaigns to test both the staff’s ability to recognize cyber threats and the town’s ability to manage those threats. With the assistance of KnowBe4, the town has decreased the average percentage of employees who click on a link or open an attachment in a phishing test email from about 40 percent to two percent. With this grant, the town will be able to continue to monitor and educate staff through the use of KnowBe4.

“With an increase in municipal cyber attacks around the country in the past few years, it is important that we continue to improve upon our efforts in cybersecurity,” Boucher said. “With the training this grant will allow us to provide to school and town employees, we intend for our staff to understand that cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility and that being able to identify and correctly respond to a cyber threat is key to remaining digitally secure.”

About the Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program

The Executive Office of Technology Services and Security 2019 Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program is a one-year competitive grant program that will help local government to improve overall cybersecurity posture through end-user training, evaluation and threat simulation.

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